Crossing the Great Divide
by Scope Eva
Summary: 39 years have passed since the end of the human/covenant war and humanity is slowly rebuilding. Unknown to them a mystery over 400 years old is about to be solved: The disappearance of Alpha Centaury.
1. Chapter 1

_2154/2591 - Pandora wilderness h_alf a kilometre South of new Omaticaya Clan Home Tree

Life was good, what more could be said. Jake smiled as he looked up at the sky, just chilling in the shade of a tree away from the hot, mid-morning sun. Little did he know that life was about to get far more complicated.

The past seven years had been good to him; he now had a six year old daughter; Natalie and a four year old son; Raltaw. He chuckled to himself at the thought that thirteen years ago he would have scoffed at the idea of him being a farther but here he was.

He noticed the position of the sun; almost mid-day. Zacharia would be arriving soon. Zacharia Felps, or Zack was the one in charge of the remaining soldiers at Hell's Gate. Having grown up on a crop tower he understood the scientists better than the dumb grunts and became friends with some of them including his next room over neighbour. Of course this had the side effect of gaining Colonel Quaritch's mistrust so he along with a number of others Colonel Quaritch had black-marked were left in the rear guard during the great battle.

It was quite a fortunate outcome really; the girl in the room next to his, Angie went against the other scientist's decision not to include any of the soldiers and told him about their revolt. At first he was going to arrest Angie but after she showed Zack some information about how Quaritch deliberately bulldozed a sacred site to secretly provoke an attack to justify his warmongering. This was enough to persuade him, his squad, the remaining VTOL pilots, a pair of AMP suit pilots, a lot of the other staff and even the crew of the ISV (Inter Stellar Vehicle) to side with them. Not all of them stayed but enough so that Hell's Gate could still function without many problems. Though it had a slightly deserted feel now with the lack of activity.

After the sacking of Hell's Gate three additional ISV arrived with mostly peaceful interactions, the rest had apparently turned back since they had not passed the half way mark yet. Some merks on the second ISV tried to cause some trouble but were easily put down. A number of personnel were also permitted to stay after strict interviews by himself, Grace and Mo'at. They had even let a few of the merks in after Zack Grilled them on how discrimination was highly frowned upon in Human society, why and how doing so would only make them defensively weaker and only make them more hated by Earth. Mo'at was even present which got him a ballsy reputation from some of the tribe. So now Hell's Gate had a population of two hundred and fifty three including thirty seven military personnel (excluding pilots) and now eighteen children. Even got a Valkyrie and large amount of fuel for it from the last ISV.

Eventually the residence of Hell's Gate and the Omaticaya began to mingle. Grace had resurrected the school though in a different location and warriors patrolled the area whenever children where there. Eventually the number of topics that could be taught there increased and the human children even joined when they were old enough. Now they even had simulated and physical war games to keep both Hell's Gate's new security forces and the warriors from nearby clan's skills sharp, using paint munitions and slackened bows of course. One of such games was taking place this afternoon.

Unfortunately the situation wasn't all sunshine, candy-floss and rainbows. There were still those who distrusted and harboured grudges against the humans. Also Mo'at and Ney'tiri had confided in him that Eywa had some concerns over the effect the humans were having on her children, the Na'vi. It wasn't enough to start panicking over but did cause some concern. When he told Trudy about it, wanting to get a more human perspective on the subject she suggested that; "Maybe she, Eywa, is just afraid of the unknown and change. From what I've heard we're the most exciting thing to happen in two thousand years. I'd be scared shit-less if aliens landed on Earth and started mining, even in unclaimed territory and doing all the other stuff we've done. Especially in Voi, liked that little town."

Jake ended his pondering, got up, stretched a bit and began to make his way back to home tree. He had to get lunch and organise his team for this evening's event.

He was about half way back when he began to feel dizzy, he shook his head and blinked instinctively to shack it off but it continued for a few more moments. He managed to balance himself and as he did he saw a wave of blue energy coming towards him and home tree. It reached him before he could react and as it washed over him he experienced a brief but intense head ache. As he opened his eyes he noticed everything had gone dark, pitch black, not even stars. The sun was still there but it was impossibly dim.

"What the fuck is going on?"

He herd howls and cries of panic and fear so Jake began to sprint back to home tree. The trees and other plants began to light up which was good but before he could get back to home tree he began to feel dizzy again and he saw the wave of blue energy again but coming back from the direction it first went in. After it passed over the sky returned to normal and he continued to run home.

When he got there, there were a lot of people standing around looking dazed and frightened. Others were helping people who been injured or comforting scared children.

Ney'tiri emerged from beneath home tree with a frightened looking Raltaw hugging her tail. _**"**__**Jhake!**__** What **__**happened? **__**Everyone...**__** started **__**feeling**__** strange**__** and **__**then...**__** some thing**__** happened **__**and**__** the**__** sky? **__**The **__**sky**__** was **__**gone!**__**"**_ She exclaimed as she tried to keep her cool, though failing slightly.

"_**I,**__** I**__**don't **__**know. **__**I've **__**never **__**heard **__**of**__** anything **__**like**__** this **__**outside **__**of **__**stories. **__**Maybe**__** Grace **__**will **__**know**__** more, **__**but **__**what **__**about **__**right **__**now?**__** What's **__**the **__**situation?**__**"**_ He asked franticly.

She took a breath and calmed herself. _**"**__**There **__**are **__**some **__**wounded**__** and **__**everyone **__**is **__**shaken **__**but **__**nothing**__** serious **__**here, **__**I'm **__**more **__**worried **__**about **__**those **__**out **__**hunting. **__**Other **__**than **__**that **__**only **__**broken **__**pottery.**__**"**_

"_**Okay, **__**good.**__** Rally**__** some **__**people **__**to **__**look **__**for**__** those **__**out **__**hunting...**__**"**_

"_**Olo'eyktan!**__** Olo'eyktan!**__**"**_ Leekog shouted as he ran up to Jake._** "**__**Zack **__**sent **__**message **__**over,**_ Ray-dee-O. _**He **__**says **__**he **__**crashed, **__**uh, **__**one **__**and**__** a **__**half, **__**um, **_clicks_** east **__**of **__**home**__** tree. **__**He **__**says **__**there **__**are**__** also**__** wounded.**__**"**_ He explained as best he could.

"Damn, I forgot about Zack." Jake muttered to himself, slipping into English. _**"**__**New **__**plan; **__**Ney'tiri, **__**take**__** some **__**riders **__**and **__**a**__** few**__** healers **__**to **__**get **__**them**__**, I **__**will **__**organise **__**the**__** search **__**parties **__**for **__**the **__**others.**__**" **_

With that they went there ways to complete their tasks.

* * *

><p>2591 - Earth early warning station 7 on the edge of Sol system<p>

Boringest job in the world. At least it paid well, but then almost everything did these days. Standards of living were at an all-time high but that didn't mean jobs like these would just disappear.

_'Then__ again __why__ the __heck __couldn__'__t __they __give __this __job __to __an __AI? __Oh__yeah! __Cole__ protocol.'_ Junior Lieutenant Robert thought sarcastically to himself. _'Even __after __forty __years __of __relative __peace __the __god__damn, __proxy __Cole__ protocol__ is __still __in __effect.'_

The Cole protocol dictated that any ship under attack must prepare to wipe all tactical data banks, navigational data and if under threat from being captured self-destruct of the ship/station to prevent enemies of the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) from gaining tactical information. So this meant even long range detection facilities on the edge of the Sol system had to be manned. A dead end job for sure but at least it wasn't as risky as patrolling the edge of Covenant Loyalist space.

Suddenly his screen began to flash red warning lights and he jumped to alert.

'Warning. Unknown phenomena detected.'

He checked the data. "What the fuck? That can't possibly be right." He checked it again but there was no mistaking it.

"Hay Rob, what the heck's going on? I was having a real nice dream." Dave was one of two others on long range sensor station eleven.

The station its self wasn't even larger than the old international space station but was a lot more comfortable and had an accurate tracing radius of twenty five light years and a less accurate range of a further seventy five. They had eighteen in the Sol system.

Malicia was the last to arrive with a gaping yawn. "What did you do wrong this time rob?"

As he was a Junior Lieutenant and they were both Ensigns he could have done them in for insubordination as it was a general alarm and they were standing there lackadaisically instead of getting to their stations but rank didn't count for much except extra paper work out here.

"Just sit down and do a system diagnostic." He typed franticly as he rearranged the sensor array to gather as much data as possible.

Half a minute later the diagnostic finished. "All systems report clean. What's this about Rob?" Malicia asked.

"Slip-space rupture about five light years out."

Dave looked at him in annoyance. "You woke me up for that? Why didn't you just ring up the fast response team to chase them out of here and leave us in peace?"

Rob chuckled hysterically. "But that's the thing; this slip-space rupture is six thousand million kilometres in diameter."

"What?" They half gasped in unison, jaws left hanging.

"Doesn't really matter now. Never thought I'd ever get to say this but; get me a priority one connection to HIGHCOM!"

* * *

><p>Authers notes: My first cross-over fan-fic! Please let me know what you think, criticism welcome and all reviews will be read. Unless I get a thousand at once but that's unlikely.<p> 


	2. When Women Get P ssed

Grace Augustine was pissed. She had almost gotten to sleep but instead this... thing happened, nobody had bothered to elaborate yet. She ducked out of the elevator and quickly made her way to the small section of the ops centre where she could actually stand up straight in her now permanent Avatar form.

"What the hell happened Max? If this was the RDA..." She asked as she leaned on the holo projector.

Max turned away from the console he was seated at. "No, it isn't. In fact, it may even be worse."

"How could it be worse than those corporate pigs showing up?"

Max snorted. "Try a few thousand comets materialising out of nowhere. That and we all got a high dose of radiation out of that event, nothing fatal but if it happens a few more times... well, we won't be around much longer. If it doesn't happen one of those comets will hit us sooner or later. We could deflect them using the Valkyrie, for a while at least. It'll drain our full supply quickly though and after that... well, I hope you've got a deep impact shelter up your sleeves."

"Crap, Jake is just going to love this. Are you sure the satellites are working properly?" She hoped it was just a glitch in the system.

"Petty sure this is real Grace, can even give you visuals if you like. I also think whether or not Jake likes this is the least of our concerns." He responded sourly.

"Ma'am, contacts on radar." Called one of the men at a work station. "IFFs read Jake, Nay'tiri and Samson sixteen; Trudy with the wounded." She had volunteered to retrieve them.

Grace sighed. "I'd better go explain the situation."

* * *

><p>Rear Admiral Juliana Mellstorm was pissed. She had only just gotten off her shift and now HIGHCOM wanted to send her off to investigate some anomaly and for some she was stuck with some historian as a civilian adviser.<p>

She marched on to the bridge of her Trident class heavy cruiser the _Tinkerbell_, coffee cup in hand. Everyone thought it was a ridicules name for a ship and she said so to but secretly she kind of liked it. It was funny and confused the shit out of Insurrectionists.

Trident class heavy cruisers were deadly three thousand meter long craft (3km). Armed with a heavy MAC (900 ton slugs), two medium MACs (600 ton slugs), a belly mounted energy projector turret, a large array of Long Bow missile pods and an equally large array of point defence weapons including CIWS system of sixty millimetre ato-cannons and pulse lasers. It could also carry a large contingency of marines, orbital drop shock troopers, fifteen squadrons of Long Sword fighter bombers, twenty squadrons of katana fighters, various drop ships, armour support, artillery and recently even a pair of orbital drop capable Armadillo assault platforms or a single Salamander but you had to ditch a pair of hangers to make room for their drop bays.

She sat down on her comfy command chair on its raised platform at the back of the bridge. Tridents were built with leading battle groups, task forces and small colonial defence fleets in mined so it had a commanders chair as well as a captain's chair.

"Morning Ma'am. Sleep well?" Captain Patterson teased.

"You know very well how I 'slept'. Give me a status report; how's the task force?" She asked the crew.

The com officer off to her left responded. "All ships report green Ma'am. _Tell__Me__Again_reports a few discrepancies in their reactor but nothing serious."

_'Hum,__good.'_ She thought. "Vicky? I know your there, quit flirting."

"Oh, but the Stalingrad ODP (orbital defence platform) AI is so cute." A full height holographic avatar of the ships AI Vicky appeared.

Juliana rolled her eyes at the AI's antics. "Just get HIGHCOM on the line and find out what on IO we're meant to be doing."

"Consider it done." She disappeared and the main screen, the middle one of three sheet of glass between the captain's chair and the foreword view port that displayed information, lit up.

On it was Lord Hood and Fleet Admiral Miranda Keys. Hood spoke first. "Ah, Miss Mellstorm. Mr Patterson. No doubt you're wondering what you're going to be doing."

"Yes sir, I most certainly eager to find out." She said in a flat tone.

"Very well I will let Miranda explain." With that Lord Hood disappeared off screen and Miranda stepped forward to take his place.

She cleared her throat and began. "At sixteen hundred hours long range sensor stations nine through twelve recorded a slip-space rupture five light years out. Before you ask what makes this so special this slip-space rupture was over a hundred astronomical units in diameter. In addition its coordinates match those of Alpha Centauri."

An eerie silence spread over the bridge. Everyone had heard the story, or rather fairy tale, of Alpha Centauri and Pandora. How the RDA had come back to Earth in shambles and demanded retaliation against the natives. Most people thought the whole thing was a fabricated publicity stunt of sorts. The RDA soon collapsed under its own wait and Earth moved forward. But the strange thing was that twelve years after the supposed Pandora incident the light from all three Alpha Centauri's suns stopped reaching Earth. When FTL travel became possible through the use of slip-space drives an investigation team was sent out to find out what had happened and what they found caused grate confusion. Nothing. All that remained of Earth's nearest celestial neighbour was a dissipating Oort cloud.

She thought about it for a moment, the implications could be massive.

Patterson broke the silence first. "So the old legends could be true... and you want us to go check it out."

"Exactly. We also need that system secure. If the Covenant Loyalists find out about an empty solar system on our front door step..."

"They could hide an innovation fleet behind it's sun and catch us with our pants down. So to speak." Juliana realised.

Miranda continued. "Not to mention if the Innies found out about this. They could have a base set up in months if we don't get there first."

"I understand. It's a threat to Earth's security that can't be ignored. I thought I should also mention that the civilian advisor mentioned in the communiqué hasn't turned up yet."

Vicky appeared. "Um, by any chance dose this man have light brown long floppy hair, blue eyes, circular glasses and no sense of direction?"

"That sounds like Milo all right. Have you seen him?" Miranda asked.

Vicky bit her lip in nervousness and answered. "He's in the brig. A man matching that description was apprehended near engineering."

Juliana sighed. "Tell security to release him and bring him up here."

"One more thing before you leave admiral; you will be joined by a pair of Sangheili battle cruisers will be joining you in system. Now, I will leave you to get under way." The screen reverted to showing ship and fleet information.

"You heard the lady! Get a move on." Patterson ordered as he stood up to observe crew members more closely.

Juliana sat back in her chair. _'Today __is __going __to __be __interesting.'_

* * *

><p>Authors Notes: Wow, this stories popular for only one, now two, chapters so far and I've got a dozen favourites and subscriptions though only one review.<p>

As for the involvement of Miranda and Grace I've based this on the 'everyone survives/gets home safely and lives happily ever after' endings that you'll have to imagine on your own. The main reason is I can't think up OC names worth a penny. Yes; I know I'm lazy but at least I'm honest.

I should also mention I wrote a lot of this a while back, about ten to fifteen chapters worth but it's all jumbled up in one document so I'm just separating it out and re-writing it a little. If the reviews get too bad I might do some more re-writing.

In response to Valerianus's review: Yes, I'm having a lot of fun playing around with the initial arrival, as you can imagine both sides aren't going to kick off to a great start, peaceful but not great. I will _never_ write one of those 'we're all good their all bad' sort of stories. As for the slip space porthole all will be explained in due time. Hope you enjoy!


	3. Of Armagedon and Archeology

Grace walked up to Jake where he had landed, Norm jogging to keep up with her longer strides. Ney'tiri had gone to help with the wounded.

"Grace!" Jake called out as he dismounted his Ikran. "Any idea what the hell just happened?"

"Armageddon; a fuck load of comets just appeared out of nowhere. That and I wouldn't stand too close to a reactor any time soon." She explained sourly.

"Armageddon? What do you mean Armageddon?"

In the back ground Norm responded to someone on his radio.

"Didn't you hear me? Comets, a lot of them; if we don't get hit soon we will later. It's only a matter of time." Grace sighed and shook her head. "We can use the Valkyrie to deflect them, at least for a while."

Jake grew cold all of a sudden. "Damn, that's dark..."

"Jake, Grace." Norm called. "We have a situation. Need to head over to the ops centre, like now." He looked a little pail.

As they began to walk Jake asked; "What kind of situation?"

"A fleet of kilometre long space ships kind of situation."

* * *

><p>"Ma'am, we have contacts, rouge comets and lots of them." Reported the sensor station.<p>

"The destroyer _Nickelback_reports a glancing hit, no major damage." Called the com officer.

"All ships are to move to standby status, have all fighters ready to lunch." Juliana then began dishing out orders. She assigned a frigate to scout out every known planet and moon in the system and sweep the asteroid belt. Another group of frigates to move any threatening comets on a collision course with the gas giant. Two cruisers, a carrier and six destroyers were to go to the other side of the system in case there were any ships hiding there. Their sensors were good but they couldn't see through suns.

Meanwhile Milo had finally arrived on the bridge. "S, sorry I'm late, Ma'am."

She looked him up and down. He had a scrawny frame, had his arms loaded with a suitcase and other personal belongings. Poor kid had probably never set foot on a war ship besides the mothballed museum kind. "No, my apologies Mr?"

"Thatch, Milo James Thatch."

"I should have informed my security we had a civilian on board. Speaking of which, why are you hear?" She asked.

He set some of his things down beside him. "W, well I'm a his, historian and an archaeologist, of sorts. I specialise in, well lost things... including the lost Alpha Centauri system, and Pandora. Most think it's a myth but if you know where to look the proof is undeniable. At least that's what I know. No one ever really bothers to look, and now..."

Juliana chuckled at the young man. "Well, now we're looking and you've got to tell us what we're seeing. Can you give me a background on what we might find?"

"Yeah, sure." So Milo explained the supposed events that happened on Pandora. The natives apparent inability to listen to someone outside their society making negotiation difficult. The RDA's miss treatment of them in return. What little the UN could scavenge from the RDA's wiped mainframe computer. It implied the natives struck first but nothing was really clear.

"So, the natives, these Na'vi, could be anything from highly xenophobic to peaceful but suspicious or even so passive they don't actually exist outside of centuries old propaganda. They could have even industrialised in the four hundred odd years we've been out of contact or even wiped each other out with nuclear warfare." She summed up.

"Essentially; yes."

Juliana took a moment to think. "You're the one who knows the most about them, that makes you our de-facto ambassadorial adviser until someone more qualified shows up. I have no intention of waiting that long so if it is okay with you I want you on the first bird down."

Milo went wide eyed at the opportunity. "The that, that would be great!"

Juliana was about to continue when the com officer spoke out. "Ma'am the cruiser _War__Machine_reports the far side of the system is clear. The frigate _Turn__and__Stand_ reports it is hold position over a moon that fits the description of Pandora. They've also sighted a base on the surface just under ten square kilometres in size; Extra Solar Colony one, Hell's Gate." He said it like he almost didn't believe it.

"Very well. Bring us and our half of the battle group into orbit. Get a squad of ODSTs to prep for drop and recon as soon as night falls over the base." She ordered.

"I, I thought you said that, well I would be one of the first down."

"I said; you will be on the first _bird_ down. If you want to get down before that I'm sure there's a spear HEV" (human entry vehicle) "you can borrow." Juliana joked.

"Uh, I'll wait." Milo knew a few ODSTs, he didn't consider any of them to be quite right in the head.

"Ma'am, contacts slipping in... it's the Elites." Called the sensor station.

"Good, ask them to meet us in orbit. I have a feeling this is going to be a long day."

* * *

><p>Authors Notes: I know, I know; I'm certainly no model fan-fiction writer that updates regularly every week or month. Still I think I did warn you my updates can be irregular.<p>

On a personal note I can really Sympathise with Sully; one of my Aunts is suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, no one really knows what cases it but the effects are obvious; slowly increasing paralysis. When I first met her (well, remember meeting her) she needed a walking stick and couldn't go up stairs without two people helping her. A couple of years later she was confined to a wheel chair. These days she can't get out of a hospital bed and can only make incoherent moans, you can forget about solid foods but at least she can still laugh, sort of. Apparently she used to be good at languages and literature, university level good. A shame really.

As for disabled war veterans I can claim some pride in the fact that due to the UK's NHS by comparison we treat them better than other countries. Earlier this year a group of them from Britain went on a trek to the North Pole. These were no minor injuries either most of them were missing a limb or two, one guy hat two knee down prosthetics! Another had a back so mangled his doctor originally said he would never walk again. It doesn't stop there either; there's a rally team made up of them who built their own car. The head mechanic has nothing from the waist down!

The Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has done more to draw attention to the cause than any other celebrity alive. It makes me rather proud compared to most countries who just give their soldiers a medal and leave them to fend for themselves.

Now, Reviews!

angelus288: I have in fact thought carefully about this topic and while I respect your argument I must ask; have you ever seen a picture of Earth from orbit? Even from the air in avatar? In the directors cut you do get a clip from inside an enclosed part of a mega city but you never get the wider picture. Both worlds display 'massive urban expansion' and in the first level of Halo 3 your fight through a set of overgrown hydro-power plants indicating some level of abandonment that theoretically could be linked to the colonisation boom giving nature room to breathe. Besides, they say Earth is dying not dead, not yet. Later on I will cover this in more detail. As for the ruling corporations the time lines are quite convenient in that mater. Avatar takes place around 2150 and Earth has a large interplanetary war around 2160-2170 (can't be bothered to look up the specific dates right now but you can go look for yourself) fought against communists and dictatorships that have risen up on Mars and the Jovian moons. Slip-space travel doesn't become available until at least 2210. There is one minor detail that solidly opposes my story and that is that the Spartan Jun is born in the Alpha Centaury system but I believe that is a small enough detail to sweep under the rug.

Valerianus: About the 'dead characters back to life' I will admit I'm having some doubts about that too but none of them will be making any major appearances for a while yet. As for Earth not being in as bad as a situation as most make it out to be I agree, the only description of Earth as a hole comes from a down on his luck ex-marine who could have his legs fixed but can't afford to, living in an apartment the barely bigger then my bathroom... and has to pay over twelve dollars for a Starbucks coffee. No offence intended but anyone in that situation is going to be more than a little pessimistic. Also; yes, a lot can happen in four hundred years. Four hundred years ago we believed the Earth was both flat and the centre of the universe that didn't extend beyond Neptune, were still hitting each other with pointy bits of metal and had barely mastered sailing without the assistance of oars. Now you only have to look at the device your reading this story off of to understand how far we've come, especially if you're reading this off your fancy touch screen, GPS capable phone that you can use to contact people on the other side of the world with. As for the Halo/Mass Effect cross over's I do agree to a point, they make decent stories and could be plausible if we were further from the galactic core then we are. Though I will admit while Citadel explored space only covers barely one percent of the galaxy but is well extremely spread out according to the maps, in addition there are estimated to be over one hundred billion stars in the galaxy (100,000,000,000) so one percent would include one hundred million star systems give or take a few regarding binary and trinary star systems. Of course most of them would be relatively baron. Add to that a good fifteen, twenty percent (just a guess) are locked up in the galactic core makes it unlikely that the Citadel Council would miss an empire as large as the Covenant. Of cores there was one story that did away with the Covenant, the Forerunners and the Flood and just had the UNSC butting heads with the council but that was just a 'lets role over the Citadel races and pretend they're too weak to fight back in any significant way and nobody dies unless they use orbital bombardment or asteroid warfare and oh yes the Reapers seem plausible so let's start mass producing nukes because one guy who was zapped by alien tech thinks so'. I HATE those kind of stories, sure their fun at first but after a while they get boring, like playing a game with all the cheat codes on... or being God.

Prototron MJ Tornada: Thanks for the support and while I have no plans for the Arbiter I might try to work him in, as for the Chief he will be making an appearance though he will be taking a side roll to Cortana in an unusual twist. Any more would be a spoiler. I do not like it when people cast Cortana's existence off as token or 'just a friend' to the Chief, I think there more than that but at the same time it's a little out of their reach considering who they are. Very hard characters to portray, especially if they're alone in a cross over.

Wow, almost as much AN as story. Sorry about that, I'll try to keep it short next time or cut the chapters into larger blocks. Keep the reviews coming and tell me if you like. For Democracy! Scope Eva over and out.


	4. Fifteen Bulldozers Under Cover of Night

Grace shook her head in dismay. She had a fleet of ships overhead and no idea what they were doing there.

Max, with Trudy's assistance, was trying to explain the situation to Nay'tiri and others.

"So far we've seen five different ships. The smallest is just under five hundred meters long and they have a lot of them; at least thirty." He pointed to the picture of a long object with two foreword prongs, the top one with an oversized barrel and a pair of boxy engine pods at the back. "So far I think they are using them as scouts. There's currently one over the base watching us from high orbit. The second largest is around seven hundred and fifty metres long, it's covered in some type of stealth material so we can't get an accurate fix on how many they have, we only noticed them because they overlapped other ships we took pictures of." (UNSC destroyers all upgraded with stealth plating and cloaking fields.)

Trudy saw some of the Na'vi were confused by the numbers. "If you want to get an idea of how big we're talking get fifteen robo-dozers and line them up; that's how big their smallest ship is."

"Then they've got their larger ships. Four of these kilometre long ships, over one thousand metres. Two, two thousand seven hundred and fifty metres long ships, we assume there carriers of some kind, see the large number of launch bays?" All the humans nodded as they observed the picture of the ship. The few Na'vi accept Jake where having trouble grasping the size of the ships. "And the last ship, the largest ship is three Kilometres long. We assume it's their flag ship. Three of the larger ships including one of the carriers disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. We think the phenomena that happened to us was the same thing they used to disappear. I'm assuming some kind of hyper drive."

Jake looked at the image. An ISV was only four hundred metres shorter but this ship was in a league of its own. An ISV was just cargo pods, a frame and engines. These were actual star ships and needless to say they were stirring up a lot of commotion. He managed to get Max's attention, somehow. "So did they move an asteroid field into the system or something? Doesn't seem economic."

"That's the funny thing; they're cleaning up the comets. Redirecting them into the gas giant. Whatever happened they appear to be just as confused as we are, may not even be human for all we know." Max explained.

_'More__aliens?__I__hope__it__goes__better__than__when__my__former__species__showed__up.__Could__even__convince__them__to__go__save__Earth__from__itself__and__put__that__part__of__my__conscience__to__rest.'_ Jake thought to himself, a little sarcasm slipping in.

"Uh, uh Grace! I'm getting more of those strange readings." Called one of the technicians manning a work station. "It's close to the fleet; I'll put it on screen."

The main screen changed to a satellite image of space and two circular distortions similar to the waves of energy that washed over them earlier. From them emerged two very strange ships. They looked more like predatory fish than star ships, they were most defiantly alien. This caught the attention of everybody in the room especially the Na'vi. The large purple and green ships looked a lot less alien to them than most human things like Hell's Gate and their machines.

They observed as the two ships hooked up with the assumed human fleet and entered orbit.

Grace broke the silence first. "Well this complicates things. See if you can get a close up on one of the ships; there should be a name on it. If it's in English, well then we know they're human. If it's in Arabic pour all the liquor down the drain, I'll get a scarf and start praying to Allah."

"I'll see what I can do." The technician said. "There, the... _Tinkerbelle?_ What kind of name for a ship is that?"

"Maybe they ran out of names on their bigger and better ships." Jake joked sourly.

"This doesn't make sense!" Norm broke out. "How could they build so many ships so fast?"

"It is possible if you think about it. They could have hidden it. All the technology theoretically exists and their new alien buddies could have helped out." Trudy pointed out.

"May be, but I have another theory." Grace offered. "We still know next to nothing about what happened. We could have suffered some sort of temporal distortion. It would account for the comets everywhere; the Orot cloud would have drifted without a gravitational field to pin it down."

"Either way, they haven't responded to our calls yet. Maybe they can't even receive us, for all we know radio could be obsolete." Max hypothesized.

"Ether way I don't like it." Jake said, showing his obvious discomfort. "They're just sitting there and we can't do a thing about that except wait for them to make their move, but we can prepare for when they do. I'm having Hell's Gate fortified and informing the clans."

Juliana watched the footage carefully. A large number of flying contacts were detected moving from the nearest native settlement towards the surprisingly intact base, Hell's Gate, a few hours ago. Vicky had also tracked a number of similar but much smaller contacts flying out on trajectories that roughly lined up with other native settlements.

A crewman passed her a cup of coffee she had ordered a minuet ago. "Thank you."

She said a little wearily. She heard one of the doors to the bridge hiss open and closed. A pair of armoured boots marched up to her side and stopped there. "Ma'am." He saluted and stood to attention, helmet under one arm.

"Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck, you and your squad have quite the record. Apparently they even want to make a film or game or something out of what you did in New Mombasa." She stated candidly.

"Pleas, Ma'am. If you've got a job for me I'd rather not beat around the bush, I get enough of that from Dare... Ma'am."

She smirked at the thought; she had met the ONI officer herself after all. "Very well, I'm well enough acquainted with your girlfriend to know. In short the impossible has just happened. The Alpha Centaury myth turns out to be not so much a myth." She gestured to the plant below them, visible through the forward view port.

"You, you mean, that's…" Buck stuttered. "Damn."

"Yes, it's Pandora. Your mission is covert reconnaissance of extra solar colony one, or Hell's Gate as many prefer to call it. You are also to deploy a package in connection to their computer network so our AIs can gain control of their automated turrets, door controls etcetera in case things get ugly. Until they do however you are not to engage the natives or any surviving base members." Juliana summed up orderly.

"Surviving base members? Surely their all dead by now. Heck the base should be in ruins after four hundred years." He objected in disbelief.

"We have images." She tapped a button on her chair and the main display lit up showing high definition aerial pictures of the base. It was a little ram shackled but obviously still operational. "To be honest we don't exactly know what's going on. They've sent transmissions claiming Pandora's sovereignty, explaining wishes for us to enter diplomatic talks or leave and threats that if we attempted an invasion it will be bloody. We plan to contact them tomorrow when a diplomatic emissary from the Sangheili commonwealth and ambassadors representing the UNSC and UOA will arrive. Of course we don't want to be walking in unprepared so…"

"You want me and my team to scout it out. When do we drop?" While interrupting a superior officer was technically insubordination he still hit the nail right on the head.

"To night; under cover of dark."

Authors Notes: Alright, another chapter up finally. I'll keep the A/N shot this time instead of the length of the chapter was last time. Is adding Buck and his squad a little too much? This is just a bit of fun I'm typing out as I'm also working on something larger and grander for hence the unreliable updates but I still want it to look good. Penny for your thoughts?

Major Simi: Thanks and well... there you go.

angelus288: Back again are we? Very well, I'm not complaining. I do own said book and if you ignore the large enclosed sections and slightly excessive numbers of adverts you'll find those seens in almost any modern city you look at. Aside from one which appears to be a giant shopping mall of some description in the middle of an urban sprawl none of them give you a wider scope of the world. Like I said before there are no aerial or orbital photographs so we get no idea of the wider picture. Maybe my chose to view it that way is simply because I am a little more optimistic about what my race can become then you are. Yes we have problems but I doubt Earth will ever look the way it did in blade runner.

Johnithan Walters: In regards to my spelling thank you for pointing it out, I will try to be more careful but I will point out some of it may be due to the fact I'm using English, English and (I'm assuming) you're using American English. Otherwise thank you for the support.

Master of The Blood Wolves: I agree. While curb stomps are tempting and initially fun they make for poor story material unless it's coming from the soon to be victorious underdogs point of view. Well done for spotting the Atlantis reference, I do oh so very much love that film even when the sequel ruined it. Regarding my spelling, see above and my astronomy? I did take it for additional science but I got an E so... yeah. Good to know my estimations are good though.

Well thank you for reading! I'm off to play some Fallout New Vegas now. Or play with my Lego, I haven't decided yet.


	5. A Grand Day Knocked Out

Joseph was stuck with the night watch again. Usually it was boring but tonight was pure chaos. Granted all the Na'vi patrolling the base now were meant to be a boon but some of them were messing around with the radios and nearly all of them had no interest in the instructions they had been given in order to patrol the area efficiently. Fortunatly a few pieces of junk left over from attempts to kill boredom around the base had livened things up.

"What d'ya mean pink and fluffy? If it's a teddy bear then you've just won last month's scavenger hunt." The voice on the other side mumbled something about mad sky people before it cut out. Life here had its perks.

Then he heard a faint beeping. He rolled over to the radar display on his office chair, it showed faint six contacts in high orbit descending quickly. They were too small and fast to be air craft so he dismissed them as comet fragments. That was until they didn't burn up and even slowed down. He tripped the alarm bringing the base to alert and used the computer to calculate the trajectory of the objects and displayed it on the main holo projector in the centre of the control room.

Zack burst through the doors looking annoyed that his sleep had been interrupted. "What's happened? What's going on? Have they sent shuttles down?"

"N,no sir. We're tracking six unknown objects through the atmosphere." Joseph explained.

"You woke me up for a few asteroids?"

"Of course not! There not asteroids, they should have burnt up by now, they slowed down and changed course several times." He taped furiously on the holo projector controls. It displayed the past and present trajectories of the objects. "Shit their heading right for us!"

Rookie checked his pods trajectory once more, making sure he was going to land near Victor and on level ground. He and Victor were fine but Micky was heading straight for a different area of the forest as was Romeo.

"All right people, I want this clean and quiet. As soon as we land stay hidden and meet up at the agreed rally point." Came Buck's voice over the com. The rally point was a group of disused mining vehicles that hopefully wouldn't attract too much attention and was close to the main facility at the same time. "We're not here to cause trouble so no shooting anyone except Romeo." A few excited chirps and squeals came down the com line. "Easy Victor, just because we're not shooting at them it doesn't mean they won't be shooting at us." There was only a low moan in response signifying the Hurgok's disappointment.

As their pods burnt through the atmosphere the surface of the planet became visible. It was a truly beautiful site, the large numbers of bioluminescent plants made up a network of teal light. "Dammed, I thought the light show was just the atmosphere." Micky piped in over the intercom.

"No shit Sherlock?" Romeo retorted. "Weren't you listening during the beefing or have you picked up sun shine's bad habits?" He said referring to Rokie's sleeping habits.

"Hay! I never heard of this Pandora place before; frontier colonist kid remember?" Micky shot back.

"Cut the chatter and eyes on the ground, prepare for impact." Buck ordered. He could only wonder how he got such an immature squad.

Hell's Gate came into view and a few seconds later they all hit the ground, activating their active camouflage as they left their pods.

Grace watched the footage in the command centre. They had caught one of the pods crashing into the ground on the edge of a CCTV camera near the old mine. It kicked up a lot of dust obscuring the view for a moment. As the dust settled part of the front of the pod blew off and a figure jumped out. He had black armour with an orange chest plate and a silver visor. He was crying some sort of rifle and had an alarmingly large green weapon on his back. The figure promptly disappeared as he began to walk off.

"Shit, they can drop in from orbit, turn invisible and now there are intruders in the base." Jake complained. They knew that they were now in the base because a group of hunters had tracked them, with considerable difficulty, to the base where a hole in the chain link fence had been cut.

"Easy buddy, we'll catch them. It's only a matter of time. We only found six pods after all; it's probably recon rather than invasion." Norm said trying to calm Jake.

"I hope your right." Grace said.

It was approaching dawn, Rocky and Victor had successfully planted a dozen Trojans in the bases main frame and uploaded its entire contents to Vicky in orbit. However they had discovered something rather strange. According to the bases calendar it was only 2161; the estimated time of the Alpha Centauri's disappearance.

Buck, Dutch and Micky were now heading for the base's garage and weapon storage area to leave some presents.

"So Dutch, you haven't said much so far. What do you think of all this?" Micky asked.

Dutch shrugged. "Not much to say really. If the old RDA was right, they were a bunch of xenophobic aliens not much different from the Elites when we first met. If the old transmissions are right we did some bad things hear we deserve what we got, just like the Elites." He answered blandly.

"Let's just get the job done and ether blow them up or make friends and then go home." Buck said. "I'd prefer the former but I'm not paid enough to think about it."

They turned the corner and almost ran into two three meter tall blue guys and a human trying to tell them a joke.

"So I said 'Why you looking so blue?' Ya get it? No you don't do you, you never…"

"Shhh, be quiet." The previously chatty marine became all business as the Na'vi spotted something.

The three ODSTs went tense, trying to remain as still as possible as the more you moved the more distorted the air became with active camo. Still it wasn't enough as one of the Na'vi swiped his bow through the air to be sure if something was there or not and hit Buck. He cursed as it hit his side before he could react, tossing him to one side.

Micky panicked a little but not so much he forgot not to actually shoot the assaulter. "Run!" He shouted as he sprayed a rough semi-circle of SMG fire around the three aggressors 'accidentally' shooting the guy who hit Buck in the foot.

They ran back down the hall to the air lock. Unfortunately the human guard was smart, thinking fast he hit the sprinkler system making the intruders more visible.

"Hay! Anybody by the garage? What the fuck is going on down there?" Came his radio.

"We got intruders! The fire sprinklers make them... less inadvisable. Send down a medic and lock down the air locks." He shouted back.

Little did they know a curtain AI had already infiltrated their communication network and was relaying useful and funny information to the ODSTs. "Boys, the guys up stairs have locked down your exit. I would open it myself but I don't want to show my cards yet. Wait... okay, Juliana has given authorisation to use the fireworks, have fun!"

"Right, thanks Vicky, good thing I bought this." Micky said as he hefted his rocket luncher to his shoulder to fire at the air lock. Each door easily disintegrated from a rocket each.

Alarmed sounded in recognition of the breach and additional troops came round the corner. Buck shot out any of the lights to throw off the 'enemy's' aim. Unfortunately it wasn't enough as Dutch's shields buckled under the barge and he got hit in the back of the leg. Another two shots grassed his side and even more rebounded off his armour.

"Dutch!" Micky called.

"Just go Guny, Micky! I'll be fine." They wanted to help but they were under orders not to kill anyone and they weren't killing Dutch so reluctantly they left, re-engaging their active camo as they went.

Dutch tossed his gun aside as a sign of surrender. His leg hung limp as he stood up. "So, hi there." One of the guards walked up to him and hit him round the head with the butt of his gun to knock him out. It rebounded off his shields. "You know, even if I didn't have shields, I'm wearing an impact resistant helmet."

A/N: Sorry it's been so long since the last update, I could make up some story about how my dog chewed through the power cables on my computer but that's not the story you're here for. Besides; I don't have a dog.

Reviews! (You may not actually remember them since I took so long. Sorry again.)

Thank you for the approval Major Simi, manatarms1989, shadow juubi overlord and Godzilla2. I hope you continue to enjoy my work and I continue to wright and eventually make lots of lovely money off some more original stuff.

Master of The Blood Wolves: Not sure what you're getting at with the marks thing but glad you're at least mildly enjoying it. I'll try to look out for more grammatical errors like that in future.

The Hidden Sith: Well I guess they ran out of scarier names on their bigger scarier ships. Seriously, there are some weird names for ships out there…

Tony (): Thanks for the support and no the humans won't be portrayed as evil though there will be a few nasty ones out there of course.


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